Archive for April, 2012

The mistake practically all of us are making is we are seeking happiness/satisfaction outside of ourselves. Why? Because we don’t feel it inside. Why don’t we feel it inside? Because true peace and happiness is NOT a feeling. Feelings come and go. What has never changed or moved or aged or had a problem with anything… ever?

Hint: It’s looking out your eyes right now!! There is zero you need to do EXCEPT notice the already alive presence that is effortlessly aware of your current experience. It has nothing to do with thoughts because all thoughts are seen by this aware presence. It is timeless. It is closer than close. It simply IS.

WHO is reading these words? Have a good look. A thought that says, “I am” is NOT an actual entity… it’s just a wispy sound! A feeling that feels like “you” is NOT an actual entity… it’s just the one feeling you are most familiar with and so it seems like you since you’ve known it the longest!

What if the sense of being a separate-self is just a mind-made assumption, but because you have habitually made it “you” your whole life, a part of you is deathly afraid to exist even one moment without it. A lie that I am familiar with is more comforting in some ways than the truth of which is completely unknown to me.

Imagine a 2 yr. old “trick or treater” who never took his Halloween mask off. He’s 46 today… he’s worn the mask for 44 years and so takes himself to be that mask. But, in actuality… was he ever really that mask?

Like this:

You are what your thoughts appear to or in. Your thoughts are not you, they appear/report to you. You are aware of them, just as you are aware of everything that appears in/to you (including your body). See if you can confirm/get a sense of this in/as your own direct experience. (Suggestion: It can be noticed not by thinking about it, but by silent straight observation).

Like this:

Yep, it’s staring us all right in the kisser and we just don’t want to FULL STOP and look directly at it. Look at what? THIS!! THIS what!? THIS experience! Something is aware of this moment! Not as a thought, but in what the thought is appearing in. Emptiness is one word for it, but to the mind this doesn’t sound sexy enough! Changeless is another word. However, no word does the job since it’s not a concept. Yet, it is what knows ALL concepts. And the best part is you already are this! In fact, ironically, good luck trying to NOT be it!!!! 🙂

Like this:

No “you” and Life, but ONLY Life. Everything is a manifestation of the ONE Life. Even the “sense” or “feeling” that feels like “you” is Life… It’s Life manifesting a pure feeling that is perfumed with a scent called, “you”… and so the suffering occurs when we mistake the feeling/thought for more than what it actually is… i.e., an actual full-blown entity called, “me.” The reality is that there is no separate “YOU” doing anything… Life does/is ALL. As Byron Katie says, you don’t have to like it, it’s just easier if you do.

Can you point to anything and say, with complete certainty, that it is “you”? Can you point to any thought, and say, I AM that? Can you point anywhere on your body, and say, I AM that? Can you point to anything and say that IT is “you”?

What happens when attention shifts to the one asking the question? Where is this question emanating from? What is the source of everything that appears? Yes, the mind can answer using words, but the words themselves cannot tell you “who made them.” Look deeper. Where does silence come from? (This is a zen-koan, so don’t look to mind for the answer.)

Have you noticed that LIFE never labels itself or calls itself anything? Look at a tree and nowhere on it will you see it referring to itself as a “tree.” “Tree” is a mental label the mind “puts” onto that tall brown and green shape!!

Look around and see if you can notice how your mind slaps a label onto everything you see (it happens so fast, most of the time we are not even aware of it).

Notice also that no object in life is claiming that it has any significance… again it’s the mind’s projection that makes something “valuable.” For example, I saw a red Lamborghini driving down Montana Ave. today in Santa Monica (was there to buy some yummy fresh cold pressed green juice–liquid gold in a bottle! :), and I noticed the car didn’t say, “Look at me, I’m a 200 k sports car!” In fact, it wasn’t saying anything! It was just being what it was… the thought that, “wow, that’s a brand new 200 K Lamborghini was a 100% mental thought projection onto the image of the car.” Seeing this clearly can be quite liberating!

Final thought: It can be helpful on the “pathless path” to remember that nothing in LIFE claims to be anything… only the mind does this.

Want real peace… the kind that all the yogis talk about? Stop “Flittering.” Flittering as in going back and forth. Have you observed how if your attention doesn’t like what’s happening “out there” in the world, it goes “inside” to have a conversation about it? What Eckhart Tolle calls, “The voice in the head.”

Have you also noticed that when your attention doesn’t like what’s going on internally, it seeks refuge outside in the “world” in the form of drugs (alcohol is a drug), money, fame, sex, exercise, eating, relationships, prestige, etc (basically, MORE).

So, inside looks to outside to “fix it” or make it “feel better,” and outside looks to inside to makes sense of what it is experiencing and assure it everything is going to be okay!

What the yogi knows is that game of mental ping-pong comes at too high a price: your inner peace. Be as you already are by relaxing exactly as you are. You come home when you rest at center.

Fear is an Illusion. Why? Because fear = the unknown. But if you are truly nakedly honest in this moment, you know that you don’t know anything or, said another way, every moment is unknown. And if every moment is authentically experienced as completely and magnificently unknown, than where is fear then?

-Michael Jeffreys

p.s. A question from facebook regarding this post:

Yami: “Hi Michael, I must be missing something here… If fear=the unknown, and every moment is unknown, then fear also=the moment?!, that can’t be, could it?. I thought the way to avoid fear is to be in the moment, which is timelss and the only known (compared to future?!). What am I missing here?”

Michael: “If ALL is unknown Yami, than fear becomes an empty word. Just like if everything was BLACK, the word black would have no meaning. Just drop ALL concepts and relax into the timeless peace that you are when you let go of all thoughts. Don’t THINK about doing this, just Do it (thank you Nike!). Effortless BEing reveals the inherent Freedom that you have always been at center, but was forgotten due to conditioning.”